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No questions asked on union super payments

Peter Trute

A transport industry superannuation fund boss signed off without question on payments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Transport Workers Union, an inquiry has heard.

Payments averaging $90,000 a year were paid by TWU Super to the union for promotional work done by union-appointed Superannuation Liaison Officers (SLOs), even though the work in one case amounted to just two and a half days.

SLOs were charged with giving out promotional material such as brochures and stubby holders, checking that fund members were receiving their statements and advising non-members to consider joining the fund.

The Royal Commission into Union Governance and Corruption began hearings in Sydney on Wednesday investigating the TWU and related entities, including TWU Super and a union-established industry training fund called TEACHO.

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Counsel assisting the commission Jeremy Stoljar SC told the inquiry that TWU Super, which has four union-appointed directors on its board, is "an important revenue stream for the TWU".

Former chief executive officer of TWU Super William Ernest McMillin, who remains a consultant to the fund's chairman, told the commission that between 1999 and 2012 he approved reimbursement claims for hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from the TWU.

In the financial year ending June 30, 2013, more than $1 million flowed from TWU Super to the TWU, with the biggest component being nearly $563,000 for six SLOs.

Asked if the invoices received were ever checked, Mr McMillin said he assumed they had been checked by the union and he had never refused to pay one.

One SLO, TWU official John Berger, was appointed as SLO for Tasmania by the TWU Victoria/Tasmania branch secretary.

The commission heard he spent the equivalent of two and a half days on SLO business in the 2010/11 financial year, for which TWU Super was billed more than $93,000 - equal to half his salary and expenses.

Mr Berger spent three and a half days on SLO duties in 2011/12, the commission heard. Mr Stoljar, asked Mr McMillin: "Does it surprise you to learn of, or to see, that TWU Super paid $96,226 in respect of that?"

Mr McMillin replied: "Yes, it does".

The commission also heard evidence from Damian Sloan, the senior legal counsel for transport company Toll.

Mr Sloan said that during negotiations of a 2011 enterprise agreement, TWU officials had warned there would be a strike if Toll did not agree to make payments of up to $150,000 a year into the TEACHO training fund as part of the deal.

Mr Sloan said he did not know what TEACHO would do with the payments made by Toll but the company had agreed to make them "to get the deal done".